Can Obama and Grace McDonnell Beat the Gun Lobby?

On a day when Maureen Dowd was banging on yet again about Obama’s failures as a political cajoler, the President defied his reputation as an aloof technocrat, delivering a stirring call for tougher gun control and shamelessly tugging on the nation’s heartstrings. After Joe Biden made the policy presentation, explaining the proposals generated by his task force, the President delivered an emotional pitch that would have done credit to Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, or any other politician endowed with what Dowd and many of her fellow Washington Pooh-Bahs would define as the requisite amount of Irish blarney.

Of course, he did it in his own way: coolly and calmly, but not without flashes of genuine feeling. Surrounded by four elementary-school pupils who had written him letters asking him to make their classrooms safer, the President read some of their messages. One, from a boy called Grant Fritz said: “We should learn from what happened at Sandy Hook. I feel really bad.” Another, from a girl called Julia Stokes, read: “I know laws have to be passed by Congress but please try very hard.” Addressing his young correspondent directly, the President said, “Julia, I will try very hard.”

Was this the new, emotive Obama that Dowd and others have been demanding? More likely, it was a President genuinely shaken by the obscene massacre at Newton, yet well aware that in confronting the gun lobby the odds remain stacked against him. As my colleague Amy Davidson pointed out earlier today, the N.R.A. is already on the air with a mean-spirited and inflammatory ad that attacks Obama personally. Most members of the G.O.P. caucus in the House are resolutely opposed to any new gun laws. And even within the upper reaches of the Democratic Party on Capitol Hill, there are those, such as Harry Reid, who long ago made a Faustian pact with the gun manufacturers and the shooters.

In such an environment, Obama’s best weapon—his only weapon, perhaps—is popular revulsion toward what happened at Aurora, Tucson, and, most of all, Newtown. Thus, his decision to end his remarks with Grace McDonnell, one of the second graders murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School. “Grace was seven years old when she was struck down, just a gorgeous, caring, joyful little girl,” the President said. “I’m told she loved pink. She loved the beach. She dreamed of becoming a painter.” After Grace’s untimely death, Obama recalled, her father, Chris, gave him one of her pictures, which he hung in his private study off the Oval Office. “And every time I look at that painting, I think about Grace, and I think about the life that she lived and the life that lay ahead of her,” Obama went on, his voice halting. “And most of all, I think about how, when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable among us, we must act now, for Grace, for the twenty-five other innocent children and devoted educators who had so much left to give… Let’s do the right thing. Let’s do the right thing for them and for this country that we love so much.”

In any properly functioning democracy, the political debate would have been pretty much settled right there, and the only question would be about the precise shape of the legislation to follow. Despite widespread support for the Second Amendment, the latest opinion polls show healthy majorities favoring all three of the Administration’s legislative proposals: restoring the ban on semiautomatic assault weapons, banning high-capacity magazines, and making background checks mandatory for all gun purchases. Americans, for the most part, aren’t irredeemably stupid or unreasonable. They recognize that the right to bear arms for hunting, recreation, or self-protection shouldn’t be extended to criminals and other ne’er-do-wells hovering around gun shows, nor should it include the right to drive around with weapons designed for warfare.

The problem isn’t public opinion, nor is it a lack of leadership on Obama’s part. Just before Christmas, he entrusted the task of generating a policy response to Biden, and I suggested that this might be partly an attempt to distance himself from an incendiary issue. I was wrong. When Obama said that Biden would return quickly with some proposals, and that he would endorse them wholeheartedly, he evidently meant it. Today, he reiterated his commitment, saying, “I will put everything I’ve got into this.”

As in many other areas, the problem is the U.S. political system, which shows itself increasingly incapable of dealing with even the most straightforward policy challenges. (Believe me, gun control is straightforward. On any objective cost-benefit analysis, the reforms Biden proposed are blatantly in the public interest.) Partly, the problem is historical. From the founding fathers, we inherited a constitutional system that was explicitly designed to prevent the federal government from doing very much—certainly not anything that would infringe upon the prerogatives of the states and the commercial interests that dominated them. But mainly, the problem is one of modern invention. With the eclipse of moderate Republicanism, the gerrymandering of Congressional districts, and the demise of campaign-finance reform, the minority—G.O.P. politicians mainly, but also some bought-and-paid-for Democrats—have acquired the urge, the ability, and the sheer audacity to defy the majority.

Unfortunately, there isn’t anything in the U.S. system that allows the moderate majority to exert its will on an ongoing basis. Nothing except public outrage, and its cumulative impact on the spineless hordes up on Capitol Hill. No wonder Obama doesn’t have much time for them. Barely had he left the dais when CNN was reporting that senior Democrats, yes, Democrats, were pronouncing the renewal of the assault-weapon ban D.O.A.

After four years as President, Obama has been around long enough not to be surprised by such a reaction. “I tell you, the only way we can change is if the American people demand it,” he said during his remarks. And he went on, “If parents and teachers, police officers and pastors, if hunters and sportsmen, if responsible gun owners, if Americans of every background stand up and say, Enough, we suffered too much pain and care too much about our children to allow this to continue, then change will—change will come. That’s what it’s going to take.”

That, and a bit of help from the memory of Grace McDonnell and her classmates.